Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hernandez, Susana Patricia Amaya
• Hersby, Ditte Stampe
• Munk, Kamilla Kjærgaard
• Tamhane, Tripti
• Trubach, Darya
• Tagliamonte, Maria
• Buonaguro, Luigi
• Gang, Anne Ortved
• Hadrup, Sine Reker
• Saini, Sunil Kumar

Titel

Three doses of BNT162b2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccine establish long-lasting CD8 + T cell immunity in CLL and MDS patients

Ist Teil von

• Frontiers in immunology, 2023-01, Vol.13, p.1035344-1035344

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: Frontiers Media S.A

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Quelle

Open access e-journals list

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Patients with hematological malignancies are prioritized for COVID-19 vaccine due to their high risk for severe SARS-CoV-2 infection-related disease and mortality. To understand T cell immunity, its long-term persistence, and its correlation with antibody response, we evaluated the BNT162b2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-specific immune response in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and myeloid dysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients. Longitudinal analysis of CD8 T cells using DNA-barcoded peptide-MHC multimers covering the full SARS-CoV-2 Spike-protein (415 peptides) showed vaccine-specific T cell activation and persistence of memory T cells up to six months post-vaccination. Surprisingly, a higher frequency of vaccine-induced antigen-specific CD8 T cells was observed in the patient group compared to a healthy donor group. Furthermore, and importantly, immunization with the second booster dose significantly increased the frequency of antigen-specific CD8 T cells as well as the total number of T cell specificities. Altogether 59 BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine-derived immunogenic responses were identified, of which 23 established long-term CD8 T cell memory response with a strong immunodominance for NYNYLYRLF (HLA-A24:02) and YLQPRTFLL (HLA-A02:01) epitopes. In summary, we mapped the vaccine-induced antigen-specific CD8 T cells and showed a booster-specific activation and enrichment of memory T cells that could be important for long-term disease protection in this patient group.